“ALL OF THE evidence presented in this courtroom has proved what I told you that very first day,” Hillary said as she stood before the jury. Then she turned back and pointed toward the defense table. “This man is a bad man.”
And like the first time she’d said it, Stone wasn’t sure if she was referring to him or his client.
“He thinks he is above the law,” she said. “He paid a man to lie and alibi him.”
And now she pointed her finger directly at Stone. “He offered his lawyer a two-million-dollar bonus for getting a not-guilty verdict.”
Stone flinched. And Byron clutched his arm. “Can’t you object?”
“You told her,” Stone murmured. But he should have told her more: the truth.
She turned back to the jury. “I hope you send him the message that your integrity cannot be bought. That nobody is above the law.”
Stone stood to offer his argument. But he had no rabbit to draw out of a hat—nothing like his usual flash and pomp. His client had tied his hands. He did his best.
But it wasn’t enough. He saw it in the disapproving faces of the jury. They thought, like Hillary, that he was just all about the money.
Two million dollars. He didn’t care about the money at all. He cared that Byron Mueller was going to die in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed.
But there was nothing more he could do. To save Byron or himself.
Hillary had shut him out—and not just out of her apartment the other night. She’d shut him out of her life. Maybe he’d crossed a line, but he’d only been trying to get through to her.
But she was too closed off. She’d found a way to protect herself, just like he had all these years. But at least he’d let his friends get close to him. He suspected she’d let no one close.
She didn’t want to need anyone.
He wasn’t too proud to admit he needed his friends—hours later—after the verdict had been returned. Simon patted his back where he sat, slouched at the bar to which they’d dragged him. “It’s too bad, man...”
He wasn’t sure if Simon was commiserating because he’d lost the case or the two-million-dollar bonus. But unlike Hillary, he was willing to give his friend the benefit of the doubt. She hadn’t given that to him or his client.
And neither had the jury.
“How could they not have reasonable doubt?” he asked.
“She presented a strong case,” Trev said, but he’d dropped his voice to a low whisper, as if he didn’t want to be overheard admitting it. “Maybe you should have had Allison go after her harder in the press.”
He could have. He could have gone after her in his closing argument, too. He could have said she was biased against his client because he was a rich billionaire like the father who’d abandoned her after her mother died. But Hillary wasn’t on trial.
And he couldn’t have hurt her like that.
Like she’d hurt him.
Of course, she hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. His client had offered him a hefty bonus. A bribe?
“Do you think, ” Trev continued, “that he could be guilty?”
Stone shook his head. But she’d obviously swayed his partner. “No, it was his kid who killed her. I’m sure of it.”
“Or do you just want that to be the case, because you’d convinced yourself you were representing the good guy?” Ronan asked. That was how, as a divorce lawyer, he broke down his cases. There was a good guy and a bad guy. And he always thought he was representing the good guy. But he’d been fooled recently and had wound up hurting the good guy—or in this case, beautiful woman.
Muriel had forgiven him, though.
He wasn’t sure that Hillary would. But he hadn’t done anything wrong. She was the one who’d sent an innocent man to prison.
Stone shook his head again. “No. I’m sure the kid did it. Byron all but admitted it to me. But he wouldn’t give a statement to Hillary.”
“He’s protecting his kid?” Simon said as if shocked at the prospect. And given how his con artist father had set him up to take the rap for their earlier cons, it was no wonder he would be shocked.
Stone was, too. His father had set up his mother to take the fall for some of his drug deals. Not that she hadn’t been complicit as well. He had no doubt that eventually his father would have had him selling drugs, too, if he hadn’t run away.
“You said the kid was the one cheating with the wife,” Ronan said and shook his head. “Can’t believe he’d protect him after that.”
If his own partners didn’t believe him, it was no wonder that Hillary hadn’t. Maybe he had been too hard on her.
And he realized that the sick hollow feeling in his stomach wasn’t just because he’d lost the case. It was because he’d lost Hillary.
* * *
Despite her victory, Hillary had that sick hollow feeling in her stomach that she’d feared she would have. She’d won the case, but she’d lost Stone. He’d seemed more devastated over the verdict than Byron Mueller had.
The press, of course, was having a field day with that. Stone’s handsome face was all over the news, the headlines reading Street Legal criminal attorney devastated to lose...two-million-dollar bonus.
That had been a low blow, even for her. She shouldn’t have included that. She closed out of the news browser on her computer. The office was quiet. Everyone else must have gone home. Nobody had offered to take her out for a drink to celebrate—maybe because her boss was furious she’d won. He’d wanted the victory for himself. And of course, it hadn’t helped that the press reports had said she was certain to get his job now.
She didn’t want his job, though. She wasn’t even certain she wanted the judgeship now. Stone might have been right that she was already too judgmental.
Not that she was, though.
Byron Mueller had to be guilty. A jury of his peers had convicted him. She’d had all the evidence.
But why did she suddenly feel as if she’d missed something? Then she realized what she missed:
Stone.
He was the person with whom she wanted to celebrate her victory. But that wasn’t possible when they were always on opposite sides. She was smart to have ended this thing—whatever it was—with him.
Sure, she’d fallen for him. But she’d get over it. Just like she’d gotten over the death of her mother and not seeing much of her father.
She stared at the cell phone she’d left sitting on her desk. A few law school friends had texted congratulations to her. Dwight hadn’t. She didn’t know if he was mad about the Stone thing or if he’d taken her advice and was trying complicated.
Would it work for him? It might. He didn’t have the history Hillary did. She knew it wouldn’t work for her. No. It was better that it had ended now with Stone before she’d gotten attached or something.
Not that she’d ever really been attached to anyone or anything.
But when knuckles rapped on her door, her heart jumped and warmed with hope. Was it Stone?
“Come in!” she called out, and she winced at the eagerness in her voice.
Maybe he hadn’t been as upset about losing as he’d looked. Maybe he’d realized that she was right, that his client was guilty.
When the door slowly opened, it wasn’t Stone standing there. She immediately recognized the young man from the photo the private investigator had taken and from court. He hadn’t taken the stand in his father’s defense. While his friend had testified that the two of them had been with him at the time of the murder, the kid hadn’t corroborated that testimony. She’d thought at the time that it was because the friend had perjured himself for the big payout Byron Mueller had given him.
Now she had a niggling feeling in her stomach that made her feel even sicker than she’d already been feeling.
It wasn’t unusual for a defendant’s family to seek her out after a verdict and request leniency. Or for her to somehow revert the verdict. Maybe that was why Kenneth Mueller was here. Maybe Stone had even sent him.
But usually he was more direct than that. Since she was, too, she asked, “Why are you here, Mr. Mueller?”
“Why are you?” he asked, and there was belligerence in his voice that made her nervous. She had a panic button under her desk, one that would alert security if she thought she was in danger.
Why hadn’t she used it that first night that Stone had come to her office? It would have saved her a lot of heartache. Because her heart was aching now.
“I thought you’d be out celebrating your big victory over billionaires and Stone Michaelsen,” he sniped at her as he dropped onto one of the chairs in front of her desk.
“Looks like you’ve been celebrating enough for both of us,” she mused as she noted his red eyes. Had he been drinking or using?
She’d known so many kids in boarding school who had turned to drugs and alcohol, like those substances could replace the love and attention their busy parents denied them.
He rubbed at his eyes, and she realized he hadn’t been partying. He’d been crying. He shook his head, as if too choked up to speak.
“Guess you have billions of reasons to celebrate,” she mused, but she was just pushing now—to see how he would react. How long would it take security to get up here if she had to push the panic button? She was more concerned with getting the truth than she was with her safety, though. So she continued, “With your father in prison, all of his money will be yours now.”
“No!” he shouted. “I told her I wouldn’t do it. And I won’t do it now.”
“What?” she asked.
“I won’t kill my father.”
New York State didn’t have the death penalty. But she refrained from pointing that out to young Mueller.
“Who asked you to kill your father?”
“Bethany,” he said. “That’s the only reason she was sleeping with me. She was trying to turn me against my dad.” He sniffled. And she realized that even though he was twentysomething, maturity-wise he was much younger. Bethany must have realized, and exploited, that lack of maturity.
“She got that gun out,” he said. “She’d stolen the keys from him somehow. But she was careful to use gloves. She made me put on some, too, before she handed the gun to me. She wanted me to use it to kill my dad, to make it look like a suicide.”
“Suicide?”
“Because he knew about us, people would think he was so devastated that he took his own life,” Kenneth explained. “But that wasn’t the truth. He was going to throw her out on the street. So she wanted me to kill him. She said that it was the only way we could be together and have all his money.”
He sniffled again. “That was all she wanted. The money. Not my dad. Not me...” His voice cracked with sobs. “And she thought that I would do it...that I would kill him. And instead I turned the gun on her, and I just pulled the trigger...” He stared down at his hand as if he could see the gun in it yet, and he looked as shocked as he must have been then.
He shuddered.
And Hillary found herself shuddering in sympathy. She couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like for him to take a life. But she felt as if she had nearly taken one herself for getting that guilty verdict for an innocent man. With the sentence he was bound to have received, Byron Mueller would have died in prison.
“I didn’t know I was going to do it,” Kenneth murmured. “But she kept pushing and pushing for me to do it. And, in that moment, it felt like it was her or my dad.”
She found herself reaching across her desk to pat the back of his shaking hand.
He looked up at her again and tears overflowed his eyes. “I—I couldn’t kill my dad,” he said. “He’s been so good to me—my whole life. He’s given me everything I ever wanted. And he even helped out all my friends...” His voice cracked again. “He’s such a good guy...and I already betrayed him with her.”
He turned his hand over and clasped hers, squeezing. “Please, don’t let him do this for me. Don’t let him go to prison for something I did.”
“Why didn’t you come forward earlier?” she asked.
“Because he was sure his lawyer could get him off.”
That was why he’d offered Stone the two-million-dollar bonus. Not for himself but for his son.
Byron Mueller’s only crime was being a doting father. Regret squeezed her heart even more tightly than Kenneth was squeezing her hand.
“But Stone Michaelsen wasn’t as good as my dad thought he was,” Kenneth bitterly remarked. “He couldn’t even get an innocent man off.”
“Your father wouldn’t help him,” she said. “He refused to tell Stone everything.” But he’d figured it out anyway. He’d been right the whole time.
“Is it too late?” Kenneth asked. “Is there any way for me to fix this—to finally take responsibility?”
“You just did,” she assured him. “We’ll figure this out. First, you need to get a lawyer. And I’ll book you on the charge of voluntary manslaughter.” She already knew that if Stone was representing him, that was the charge he’d get for his client. And given the circumstances, it was probably the right one.
“Can you call Stone Michaelsen?” he asked. “That’s who my father will have represent me. And when can we get my dad out of jail?”
“You’ll have to allocute to the crime,” she said, “and the judge will have to accept your plea before your father will be released.”
“He can’t get out now?” he asked, and he sounded like a child again. His father had probably never made him wait for anything, so he had no idea how due process worked. Or how life worked...
She understood why his father had chosen to go to prison for him. Kenneth Mueller wouldn’t make it there. He wasn’t mature or strong enough.
And his father loved him.
“He’ll be fine.”
But instead of reassuring him, her words had him sobbing harder again. She needed to book the kid. She glanced at the time on her phone. It was probably too late to get him in front of a judge for a bail hearing, anyway. He would have to spend the night at the Tombs. But he needed to have his lawyer present to officially take down the statement he’d just given her.
She reached for her cell phone and pressed in the contact for Stone. But it wasn’t his deep voice that answered her call. She couldn’t be sure who it was, though, for all the background noise. But she suspected it was one of his partners.
“I need to speak to Stone,” she said.
“What? You want to gloat?” the man asked her. “You going to rub your victory in his face?”
“No. But I need to see him,” she said.
The man snorted derisively. “Well, he’s a little busy right now. We’re all at the Meet Market.”
And she heard the tinkle of a woman’s laugh in the background. And Stone’s deep voice murmuring something in reply. And her heart broke.
She felt like laying her head on her arms and crying like Kenneth Mueller was. But she was stronger and more mature than that. She’d had to be.
“Well, when he’s done partying, tell him Kenneth Mueller is in my office confessing to the murder for which his father was just convicted.”
“What?”
“Tell Stone he was right,” she said, even though the words panged her nearly as much as hearing him making another woman laugh, like he’d always made her laugh.
“Hillary, wait—”
She said nothing more, just clicked off that call to make another. To the detective who’d handled—or actually mishandled—the homicide investigation. Unlike Stone, he was going to come right to her office.
Stone was busy—hooking up with another female. He hadn’t really wanted her at all.
He’d just wanted to win.
Well, he had his win now.
She hoped it felt as hollow for him as it had for her.